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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

How to Lower Your Laptop Temperature

Do you find your laptop hotter than before? Does your laptop always blow hot air from the vent even if you don’t use any heavy duty program? Do you feel your laptop keyboard or touchpad getting hotter?

A hot laptop usually means a short life span laptop. You should always keep your laptop temperature low to prolong its life span. Using a cool laptop feels better too. You won’t feel as if your laptop just came out from the oven.

So what should you do if your laptop gets hotter than before? Here is a simple tip to lower your laptop temperature in one minute.

It started with my younger brother having some software problem on my old Acer laptop. He was in China. So the computer technician helped to format and reinstall the operating system. But after that, he found the laptop was quite hot. Even the keyboard and touch pad was hot. So he used a laptop cooler with fans.

When he came back, my another younger brother found out the real culprit for this heat problem. It was caused by Windows Power Management setting! The power scheme was set to “Home/Office Desk”. Setting it back to “Portable/Laptop” solved the problem immediately.

Before this, I thought the Power scheme is only a preset of timeout setting for turning off monitor, turning off hard disk, system standby and hibernate. Apparently, it does more than that. Choosing “Portable/Laptop” power scheme lets Windows know this is a laptop. So Windows will adjust its operating environment to save power and therefore, reduce temperature.

How to set the power scheme for your laptop?

For Windows XP, go to Start -> Control Panel and double click on “Power Options”. Under “Power schemes” section, select “Portable/Laptop” and click “OK”. Another simpler method is to left click on the Power taskbar icon and select the required setting.

For Windows Vista, the step should be roughly the same.

Just today, one of my relative with Acer laptop also experiences hot laptop. Hot air keep blowing out from her laptop fan. And she placed a laptop cooler at the bottom too. At first I thought it was the problem with Acer laptop. But then I remember the Power scheme setting. So I checked her power setting and it was set to “Always On”. After I changed the setting to “Portable/Laptop”, her laptop fan stopped blowing hot air after a few seconds.

So if you have similar problem, you may want to check your power scheme setting. Remember to set it to “Portable/Laptop”.

You can also check the program running on background. If possible, reduce your background program to minimum to reduce CPU work load. If a program crashed, CPU work load may be increased by 50% too.

doff, please be nice and patient to others. As a computer scientist, I could tell you that changing the power setting DOES change the workload directly and eventually leads to lower temperature. Do you want to be called a retard every time you don't know anything? Don't treat others the way you don't want to be treated.

If you don't want to help others, it's OK but calling others stupid doesn't make you smarter.

BTW, here's a link for vista power setting.http://www.pcreview.co.uk/articles/Windows/Vista_Power_Options/

doff, people like you dont deserve to have a computer. Some people cant use laptops just like some people cant speak italian or like some people cant do advanced algebra. computers are a skill that nobody will ever master. I bet you make dumb mistakes yourself. your the idiot my friend and people like you should just learn to say nothing at all before someone gets fed up and cuts off your tongue like they did before there were computers. and for your information, i had done everything possible to reduce the core temp of my acer which was running at 90 degrees Celsius, but after i changed to laptop setting it dropped within ten minutes to 50 so you can take your shoe and put it in your mouth where it belongs. Im reporting you for inappropriate content because you just insulted the person who stopped me from having to buy a new laptop. And for the record i bet you wouldnt talk like that to someones face coward. Your probably just some twelve year old nerd who wants to release the frustration of being bullied at school on people online. My suggestion to you is to take a chill pill or smoke a doobie and calm the F*** down man.

Had my Win 7 power setting set to "Balanced" and core temp was running around 180F to 189F, with a cooling pad. I just changed power setting to "Power Saver". Less than 5 minutes the core temp is 129F and the fan has shut off.

I was totally amazed at the difference it made on my Acer Aspire 5050.

it worked very well in hp windows7.i changed the power scheme to the high performance. my core temp was around in 90. but when i changed to power saver mode.it fell down to 60.i also didnt believe first, i thought it wont work, but it worked. it has given me peace of mind.

my acer aspire 5315,has been running around 70 to 90c.it even been into repair shop who said i may need a new heatsink and fan in the near future....i changed the power mode as suggested and after about 5 mins,the temp dropped to 50 to 60degrees c.what a fantastic,simple thing to do,which has results that dont cost you money.i was going to comment about doff but then thought i would use the energy needed to scratch my balls.

10c does not help anything here, if I play or watch a video of the temperature +94C ! It's not normal for a laptop cleaning went, still as a joke!Maybe someone recommends a program of the fucking temperature ca. Was to +40C ???OS: HP Pavilion DV5 1120en & WIN VISTA Ultimate X32

I had the same problem with my new laptop, the temperature goes around 85 - 90 degree Celsius while playing intensive games like COD Black ops, Burnout paradise..And less hot while normal use that is around 60 - 70.I will get try the power option to lower the temperature range.Laptop spec:Intel i5 2430M, 4GB RAM, Intel 3000HD Graphic, Dedicated Graphic 1GB, 500GB HDD.

cleaning the heatsink and fan makes the laptop cooler and also the powersaver tip from this article! at first i haven't clean my laptop i just tried the power saver and it became cooler, then try cleaning it and used external cooling fan and now i dont even turn my aircon to cool myself off :D

Thanks for the tip,i have an 8yrold IBM thinkpad T41 with winXP (which still works quite well),after changing powersettings to "portable/laptop" the CPU temp came down from 65 to 48.i shut it off to cool down for abt an hour after changing setting and since restart it has been constant around 48 for last 2 hour.

When you set your power plan to Power Saver or Balanced your CPU and GPU are going to perform at a lower clock speed. This means that the performance of the laptop is going to be lower. I set my power plan to High performance, I don't care about battery life because I have it plugged in, and I don't care about high temperature if my laptop doesn't shut down. If your laptop shuts down because it's hot you should have it checked by a technician. Sometimes it could be a clogged fan. Or it could be signs of the Northbridge "video chip" going bad.

Remember, the power plan is for changing it depending in what are you using your laptop for. If your playing games, Editing Videos, Video Rendering or doing Photoshop you should set it to High Performance. If your using Word or are web browsing, Balanced or Power Saver is good enough.

i have a laptop with intel i3,3GB ram ,320 hard disk,windows 7.two days ago it suddenly turn off,then I find that it's temperature is very high.,still the problem is going on and it getting turn of after some 30mins.I change the power plan..but it is not working.please help?

I could be the fan is clogged or it stop working. Yopu have to open the case and get to the heatsinc and fan. If you do not know how to do it, you should play it safe and take it to a professional computer repair shop. If the laptop has warranty, then get in touch with the manufacturer. Good luck.

it is the best advice ever, never thought it would really solved so easily as the overheat problem has been here for 2 years! and now the heat is gone, just simply changing the power option from balance to power save as in my win7, thanks again!

I have Asus(windows 7) laptopI changed power option setting from balanced to Power saver.Laptop Temperature has reduced from 85-90 to 60-65. But now i can see that CPU usage has increased from 30 to 80%, is it because of changing this setting.The use of laptop is still the same.